Software economics · 6 min read
Your software backlog may be mispriced
Most enterprise backlogs were prioritized under an engineering cost model that no longer holds. The list did not change. The economics did.
A backlog is not a neutral list of work. It is a record of decisions made under a specific set of constraints — what a team could staff, what an estimate implied, what a governance cycle would tolerate. Those constraints were real. They were also priced.
When the cost and duration of building serious software change materially, every item that was deferred for cost or duration reasons deserves to be re-read. Not re-approved. Re-read. Some will still be wrong to build. Others were only wrong at the old price.
The uncomfortable version of this question is simple: how many items were removed from the roadmap because they could not clear a threshold that no longer applies?
This is not an argument for building more software. It is an argument for pricing the decision correctly. A backlog that has never been re-examined against current execution economics is a portfolio managed with stale inputs.
The practical move is small. Take three deferred items. Re-estimate them honestly against an AI-native delivery model. If the answer is unchanged, the discipline cost you an afternoon. If the answer changes, you have found capacity that was already yours.